Dr. Fauci Is the Highest Paid U.S. Federal Employee | Hacker News Reader

Dr. Fauci Is the Highest Paid U.S. Federal Employee

forbes.com

20 pointscronix23 comments

$417,608 is not completely unreasonable for a Cornell-educated doctor who has more than half a century of experience and holds one of the very highest medical offices in the US.

Then we should expect better of him than "no it isn't, wait... yes it is" that we get constantly. The most recent was his response to the idea the UK variant is more deadly.

Is your position that he has information that he’s not sharing? As opposed to the idea that there’s new information in an unfolding situation..

My position is that he is giving off-the-cuff opinions instead of informed positions. He seems to speak without having reviewed available information.

Have you considered that he’s tasked with distilling a highly technical situation with few parallels and known factors, that is also highly fluid in nature down to basic talking points. Talking points that someone without a medical degree can digest in 5 minutes. And as a result it can sometimes come across as waffling or confusion.

And that’s an inherently difficult situation. I know a LOT of very smart people that struggle with just that. Not to mention he did such for about 9 months while also battling combative superiors and him struggling to strike a balance that would still allow him to even....get that info out there.

His salary is related to Title 42, which is part of the federal salary regulations allowing for higher salaries for certain public health positions.

I'm not sure what it's like for long-tenured Federal employees, but I know that at the State and Municipal level, sometimes things like pensions or retirement healthcare make compensation better than they appeared. (For newer Federal employees, the pension sucks so it's not such a big deal)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125320570827920075

This is just drama ginned up. There used to be a congressman from Texas who'd make noise about this program back in the Bush/Obama days. For specialized medical people where tenure and experience matter, you absolutely need to have a way to compensate appropriately. Lawyers can pop in and out of service, but someone like Fauci needs to be an employee vs. contractor and benefits from long tenure.

Dr. Fauci’s salary is good but not fantastic for any person with an MD. Considering his level of expertise it’s safe to say he could make much more in the private sector.

The fact that public roles pay less than private roles opens them up to corruption and makes it harder to attract the best talent. Go look for tech jobs available at your local and state government and you’ll start questioning who would take up such a position.

https://www.kaptest.com/study/mcat/doctor-salaries-by-specia...

This is pretty much in line with standard physician salaries in the US. If anything Fauci could be making more in a traditional hospital setting at his career stage.

What is the point of this article? Many people I worked with at Apple made more (much more) than this.

It's a hit piece intended to sow hatred and gin up the reactionary base.

Should be paid even more, if you ask me. I wish compensation in government jobs were more in-line with private sector.

(Yes, I realize that Dr. Fauci et. al. probably have other streams of income from things like books and speaking tours. That's not the point. The point is that someone with as big a pair of shoes to fill as he has should be compensated to match this responsibility. Neurosurgeons out of residency make more than Fauci. That's not right, in my opinion. (To be clear, I'm not saying that neurosurgeons get paid too much!)

Rank-and-file government jobs have less risk than private sector jobs. Part of the reason the private sector pays more is because it has to compensate for that risk.

I call BS. This is probably thinly veiled political content making its way to HN.

https://www.armytimes.com/off-duty/military-sports/2017/09/1....

Looks like the military academy football coach is a contractor, not a federal employee.

Interestingly, medical specialists is one of the few places that the USG has allowed itself to offer competitive salaries for expertise. Wish we'd do the same for software engineering and data analysis.

Right. The government has salary caps but unlimited contractor budgets, for which the government pays transactional overhead. It's absolutely absurd.

The article is a hit piece by a Republican anti-big-government activist, and a dishonest one at that, focusing on salary and ignoring benefits ("makes more than the President", who has a massive personal service entourage and huge pension? Come on) and ignoring contractors who get paid far more.

> Dr. Anthony Fauci: The Highest Paid Employee In The Entire U.S. Federal Government

The US really needs to hire a football coach to fix this scandalous situation.

That happens at the state level. In most, if not all states a football coach is the highest paid government employee

The opportunities to make off the books money are far more limited for a state university football coach (who doesn't really have much influence over things) than for a legislator or high level administrator so the state has to make it up in above the table compensation.

Navy pays their football coach > $2Mil

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2017/11/08/secret-serv...

This appears to be a ridiculous hit piece, insinuating that Fauci is somehow untrustworthy or otherwise compromised in his position by his high pay. Why would Fauci's criticism of the Trump administration be relevant here? If this were just a fun anecdote about a newly widely-known government worker then it'd be one thing. But the other material in the article makes it... suspect.

417,000 hardly seems outrageous or compromising, especially after a fifty year career in government service across many different red and blue administrations. Compare that salary to a CEO of a major hospital network, for example.

OpenTheBooks looks on the surface to be a fairly neutral party, but the name of their published report is literally "Mapping the Swamp".

sounds like pretty good value to me

Seems low

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oza1j2_WqBk

Reply on news.ycombinator.com